In- if not Honor, at least Respect- for Hasan al-Turabi

I REALIZE THAT it might seem (particularly to those who talk to me on Gchat) that I am traipsing about this continent on a rollicking expenses-paid tourist trip that constitutes without question the most benevolent and interesting act of random generosity in my life thus far.
HOWEVER, I must establish that this characterization is not entirely true. (Mostly it is, yes.) But technically I am doing Busy and Important Work for Important Religious Studies Research. And to prove it to those detractors who know my foolishness all too well, I'll blog all about one of the most interesting interviews we've done here: an evening chat with none other than Sheikh Hasan al-Turabi.

The elderly sheikh has a long and convoluted history in Sudanese politics and the radical Islam movement; this former mentor to General B himself later broke with the dictator in the legislature and was repeatedly imprisoned by the regime throughout the 2000s for his noisy criticism. In arranging to meet him, David and I were told just to show up at his house in Khartoum, just to walk right in after 7 p.m., and that he would be happy to talk to us. Needless to say, we were both skeptical, but we figured we'd try it anyway, and around 7:30 on a Wednesday night we showed up on the posh doorstop of the politician's semi-suburbian residence.
We were immediately shown into one of the poshest rooms I have seen yet or since in the Sudan, a sort of reception room for greeting guests. While we waited to hear whether the sheikh was available, I very surreptitiously snapped a secret photo (for later publication on this blog, of course- please enjoy).

To our surprise, al-Turabi pushed aside whatever prior evening arrangements he had, and after a few minutes we were ushered into a more intimate reception room to meet with him. Having prepared myself to meet (and perhaps not be acknowledged whatsoever by) an austere champion of radical Islam, I was blown away by the elderly chap who came out to greet us. Hasan al-Turabi is, in a word, charming. He's warm, witty, chatty, gregarious, hilarious, and in many respects, charming. I could see right away the politician in him: the three solid hours we were to spend in his house that evening were not so much an interview, or even really a discussion, but an incredible stream-of-consciousness-style flow of energetic speech from him to us, his more or less captive (and silent) audience. His English was flawless, as was his French and (I'm assuming) his German, fluency he attributed with a good-natured chortle to long years of political detainment with only books for company. (Al-Turabi on prison: it's quite the ideal setting for quiet and uninterrupted study!)

David came to talk about Islam, the Sudan, and the future of both, but al-Turabi was obviously much more excited about the opportunity to discourse at length on the West and Western history for the past thousand years. His unsolicited, definitive summary of our own [Connecticut-born-and-bred] * former * president Bush - that he was fundamentally a Southern product and "never could have come from New England" - provides a good example of how his interpretation of the world, though interesting, is not always factually accurate. (Readers who know me can imagine the polite strain I suffered when he uttered those words, but really, I needn't have worried about how to respond to such nonsense. Even his pauses for breath were so rare and brief as to preclude any expectation of comment from his audience.) The polite hints from my professor friend, thrust into the scanty pauses Turabi used to suck in new breath, that he (David) was already "familiar" with the material- "Yes, I did my doctoral dissertation on the Umayyads"- did not perterb our chatty host in the slightest. Or even affect him. They also unfortunately failed to steer him whatsoever from his chosen topic.

The nature of our host's conversational style - intellectual excitement to talk to us, expressed flamboyanty through gestures and words that surged forth as if from a dam - led both David and I to privately wonder if this respected and learned sheikh was not a bit lonely for intellectual companionship. Sure, he's surrounded by people all the time, but never any who are interested in more than just hearing him spout wisdom. (Which he is obviously accustomed to doing.) He could barely let us go even after three hours, past the time when we should have left, even when troops of other men in white robes were obviously waiting for him to attend their previous appointment, talking with us right up to the door and into the hallway.

All in all, I liked him. I accept that, intellectually, I might have next to nothing in common with him, but I couldn't help it. I liked him right away, and found him immensely entertaining. He joked with me in French and David in Arabic, but respected me enough to suggest we do the entire interview in English, which remains David's and my only common language. (Not having another one is definitely a severe drawback, as it has repeatedly interfered with our ability to gossip discretely about those around us. I've suggested Pig Latin. David is skeptical.)

David and I both left the sumptuous residence a bit overwhelmed and (I have to admit it) relieved to be free, but we still both enjoyed talking him over a bit on the way home.
One week later, the BBC reported in this article that Hasan al-Turabi has been arrested for his criticism against General B. (He had been making statements to the effect that Gen. B should face his genocidal guilt before the ICC.) The article, which includes an action-shot style picture of the face still fresh in my memory, describes how al-Turabi is now in interrogation and solitary confinement, and that his family is worried about him. Thinking back to our meeting a few days before, David hazarded the opinion that perhaps al-Turabi knew it was coming, and that it might explain a bit his eagerness to talk to us.

Although I have no sympathies for Hasan al-Turabi's politics or his cause, I do for him as an individual. He is the only person I have ever known personally who is now a political prisoner. While I cannot in good conscience honor him with this post, I will dedicate it to my respect for him - as I respect anyone who has the courage to speak out against a dictator.
To Hasan al-Turabi, 76 years old and in interrogation: ganbatte kudasai.

The Day of Rage

So to continue my tale from yesterday.. This dude Qaradawi (Preacher Q) decided to declare Friday, January 9th an international "Day of Rage" for all Muslims against what was happening vis-a-vis Israel and Gaza. David warned me about this that morning, just mentioning it as something to be aware of, so we could both keep a bit of a lower profile.
That day, we had also had plans to go to the traditional Muslim quarter of the capital, Omduraman, for the sufi religious Hamda'nile Festival (spelling?). This is a delightful, noisy, frolicsome celebration held every evening (but especially on Fridays) in conjunction with the evening mass. The festival's quite a hoot, with all kinds of people drumming and chanting and praying and (in some memorable cases) cavorting wildly around a large circle. We both thorougly enjoyed it, even though it was hardly David's first time seeing it.

The negativity began quite suddenly; I was talking in English to a Sudani after the ceremony ended when another man came up to me and began speaking incoherently in English. David and I, on comparing notes later, were both reminded of those odd paragraphs of almost randomly-chosen English words or phrases that appear inexplicably at the bottom of spam emails offering certain personal enhancements for men. This dude's speech was similar- he was loud and he was nonsensical, and he was up in my face so intensely and suddenly that I was almost too bewildered to reply. When I came to understand that he wanted to know my country of origin, and explained that I was American, he got yet noisier and began trying to determine which part of the country I harked from. As I began to try to explain that I was not from Washington D.C. or Chicago (the places he guessed), I very suddenly noticed that he was flanked on both sides by sullen-looking men. Confused, I looked around to see more and more men arriving every moment, and the hostility emanated from them in waves. Before I knew it, I was completely surrounded by sullen, silent men who towered over me with scowls on their faces even as I stammered to try to answer the nonsensical questions put to me by the rabblerouser.

Thank goodness David is a faster thinker than I am, and he grabbed my arm and yanked us both out of there. We walked quickly away from the men and the crowd, robbed of its curio, fizzled out and dissipated. My heart was pounding and neither of us really relaxed until we were considerably away from anyone else, at which point I exhaled a huge amount of air that I abruptly realized I had been holding captive in my lungs. Oh my goodness, I thought. So that's how mob violence begins.
Unfortunately the would-be mob-leader had not even begin to lose interest in us, and when I turned around he was right there again, this time getting up in my face about the "occasional preposition" or some similarly unintelligible subject that I believe was vaguely grammar-related.
David and I kept walking away from him, but gradually it became more and more obvious that he was following us. Night was falling, we needed to find a way to get back to Khartoum, the streets were beginning to empty, and every time I looked back the same lone figure was ambling along after us. I took out my kubaton, and David and I walked faster. Ahead of us, we glimsped the safety of a public bus, and after bolting across the street, we hid behind one bus, and then leapt aboard another just as it was beginning to leave. I leaned out to look back, and just managed to catch the sight of that same figure, still on the opposite side of the street, peering at the buses behind us. We had lost him. And I laughed. David laughed too. We laughed with the sheer joy of life, of safety, of being alive. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Ultimately, what stayed with either of us was not the brief, scary moment of hostility we felt in that crowd, or the alarming realization that we were being persistently followed by a weirdo. The night had more to offer for us.
Perhaps our crazy laughter endeared us to the old jolly busdriver, for we ended up befriending him along the bumpy ride back to the city center. Such a friendly chap he was that upon our arrival, he invited us to a spot of tea right there in the bus, as it was the end of his routes for the day, and so we all sat around the gearshift for a bit drinking lovely na'na mint tea prepared by one of the many tea-ladies who always set up around Sudanese bus stations. Of course he insisted on paying for all of us. (In truth, neither David or I were much amazed at any of this somewhat amazing and unlooked-for generosity; it had happened so many times before, and would continue to happen throughout our time in the Sudan.)
Then we all said goodnight, and David and I went back to our hotel.. full of tea, full of the joy of life, and full of the contentment that comes from being in a country of- despite anything Preacher Q or the occasional rabblerousing psycho tries to incite- fundamentally warm, hospitable, and generous people.
Thank you, Sudan.

As the world turns.. (taking a look outside my cocoon of ignorance)

So I suppose I owe it to the trip to deliver a comment or two about the phenomenon of traveling in a Muslim country as a Westerner in the present political climate, and that it is my responsibility to at least acknowledge a skeleton of current-events context.
Unfortunately, my current events knowledge tends to be highly patchy, and vast tracts of information exist outside the scope of my rather limited understanding. So PLEASE add your two-cents' worth to correct or explain anything I do badly here. Comments below.

The most important global event in the Sudan's consciousness is of course the fighting going on in the Gaza strip. Regardless of any of my readers' particular political sympathies, it is my general impression that the Sudanese people support Palestine (despite the official positions of several governments in the Arab world). As David and I travel, every time we see a television it seems to be tuned to Al-Gezira news media channel, with extensive footage of the destruction caused by Israeli bombings. There are occasionally broadcasted speeches by various political or religious figures condemning Israel's actions, and it seems fairly clear (even to non-Arabic-speaking me) which side of the table Al-Gezira news sits on.

As for Sudan news in particular, there are a few special things going on that have made our visit more interesting. Most particularly, Sudan's general-dictator Omar al-Bashir could potentially face an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. The ICC prosecutor has recommended issing this warrant due to the genocide and humanitarian crimes that have been and are being perpetrated in the western Sudanese states of Darfur.
The ICC met to begin deliberating on this on or around January 7th. Any arrest action on their part has already been officially condemned by the Sudan as masking a political agenda, but governmental forces here have nonetheless gotten a bit testy about it. Walking around the capital of Khartoum on January 6th and 7th, David and I noticed an increased military and security presence. (I really wanted to get a closer look at the freakin-huge light-bedecked presidential palace that preens itself at the end of a major avenue, but ultimately followed David's recommendation that we give security forces a bit of space at this particular junction in time.)
The increased security is also a reflection of the global current events, as the city held a large demonstration January 8th, the purpose of which was apparently to 'demonstrate' to Israel how cranky they are with it. (I'm not sure whether PM Olmert was listening, but they can always say they tried.)

The anti-Israeli demonstration and the ICC case have not necessarily informed my own experience of the Sudan, but it's definitely important to be aware of both situations. Atrocity of ignorance aside, it's not an impossibility that current events could come to play a role, however small, in my largely-tourist experience of the Sudan. For example, the head of Sudan's intelligence agency warned last weekend that if General B (my euphamism for the ol' dictator)'s warrant comes through, foreigners in the Sudan could be targeted for violence.

In a similar trend, a certain religious figure in the Arab world, Qaradayi (Preacher Q), called for a "Day of Rage" on the part of Muslims over what's going on in Gaza. Unlike the ICC business, this DID come to slightly affect David and I, but we both managed to get out of the situation quickly and painlessly. (More on that tomorrow.)Still, it's worth being aware of things like that.. and I'm very happy that at least one of us (David) is!

Not for those with weak stomachs

PORT SUDAN: I think I'm beginning to realize that this trip is going to be a lesson in cheerful, resigned acceptance of my own dirt.

In the last two hotels we've been in, the shower was too repulsive for me to bring myself to use it, with the result that it's actually been about five days since I've showered. I don't actually mind it that much however, because I continue to get so very dirty with each successive day that attempting to shower would be an exercise in futility. Wind blows the Sahara sand into my hair; my feet have black lines from dirty sandals and dirtier streets; my fingernails are caked with black gunk; my entire body has not seen soap in days.

My feet probably deserve their own paragraph. By black, I do mean actually black; black-and-tan, if you count the upper bit, sort of like a Guinness. Only not that pale a shade of tan. And the tan has stripes in it where my sandal straps go. And it's not actually a tan. This morning a piece of beans from my fuul breakfast fell between my toes and, as usual, I had no way to clean it off. I kind of flicked it away with one fingernail but the mashed residue remained to more or less become a part of the next layer on that foot. (Hey - you're reading this far, you obviously ignored the warning in the title.)

I have to admit, it's kind of entertaining on a disturbing level to see how very shockingly I can smash my own hygenic tolerances with these things attached to my legs. I now fully understand and appreciate the traditional Muslim abhorrence of feet. The Muslims have got it right. Feet are dirty things. They are not necessarily so if certain implements (socks, close-toed shoes, paved roads, clean sidewalks) are a part of your daily life, but otherwise, they really shouldn't ever be seen or touched. By anybody. Ew.

A Cocoon Found.. and Lost

A few days before I was preparing to leave for this trip, amid the bustle of the holidays, David called to remind me to bring along some mosquito netting. Happy-inducing malaria pills aside, no one likes mosquito bites, and he was quite right in suggesting I might occasionally like to get some peace at night in mosquitoey areas.
My mum quite generously offered to pick up this last item from our local outdooring store, to give me a bit of extra time packing and getting myself together. I was quite grateful and expected her to bring home a simple, small, light-weight and easily stuffable ball of mosquito netting, to be draped over myself or slept in with the edges tucked under in just the fashion David is currently sporting over on his cot. However, such primitive expectations far underestimated my mother's creativity and her dedication, and it was with great pride that she presented me that night with an Outdoor Explorers BugBivvy (TM) 2000.

I'm afraid it was with less enthusiasm, and only due to the lateness of the game, that I accepted the BugBivvy (TM). It was large, bulky, weighty and of alarmingly low stuffability, but I did my best to stuff it all the same into the one tiny suitcase that would come with me to Africa.

The BugBivvy was first produced about four nights into the trip at one particularly mosquito-friendly hotel, pulled out of my bag to the shock and great entertainment of David. The thing looked like a half mesh, half plastic sleeping bag with enough volume for five people and a single inexplicable collapsing stick that poked its way awkwardly through a paucity of badly-organized loops for about seven seconds before demonstrating its definitive quality and collapsing on itself. Much to the continued merriment of David, happily ensconced beneath his own simple net in roughly the same amount of time. I set the pole aright again and again, if only for the sake of photographing the pathetic construction for my review at a later date when I would presumably find it funny as well, before admitting defeat and clamboring inside its zippered depths, fabric pooling on my face and feeble pole poking one or the other of my arms whichever way I turned.

I have slept in this way three times now, the most recent of which was characterized by David as a battle between myself and the 'cocoon', his moniker for the miserable set of mesh and pole that I spent much of my pre-dawn hours thrashing about in. My mother's dedication shall always be appreciated, but the BugBivvy was not exactly a success.


IT IS THE MISERABLE FATE of a miserable traveling Murphy's Law that the night I finally realized how to properly put together my cocoon, the night I declared I would spend the rest of my nights abroad comfortably ensconced in its protective zippered depths, a night that should have remained one of unbridled elation and triumph, was the same night that I discovered I had, with the introduction of an unsavory bedsheet the night before, invited into said cocoon an army of the hungriest bedbugs the third world has ever seen. By 2 a.m., I had 47 new bites. Unable to sleep with frantic scratching, I spent from 2:15 to 2:25 a.m. locating and cataloguing all my various new bites. I then spent from 2:25 to 2:50 ruefully reflecting on the bitterness of irony to the regular respiration sounds of the enviably slumbering David in the next cot. I then spent from 2:50 to 3:16 a.m. writing this very blog post, scribbling it out on my notepad between scratching sessions, and deciding upon its title: truly, a Cocoon Found and Lost.

Sick, Sick, Sick !

KHARTOUM, SUDAN: I might occasionally include a week of silence in this blogging trip, but I hadn't planned on taking one quite so early. Allow me to explain, I've been taken a bit out of commission. One of the several dooms foretold me- the medical doom I would deserve for pursuing these foolish travel plans- has come to pass. Africa got me!

I suppose I knew it would happen, sooner or later, but it turned out to happen a lot sooner than later, about eight days into the trip in fact. 0.4% complete for statisticians. Depressing for me. During the six days (six!!) that I spent suffering from what I can only describe as a battalion of medical ills, my uppermost worry was often that David, knowing me for only a week prior, would by lack of information be forced to conclude that I'm a sickly, whining, low-energy weakling who prefers her own sagging hotel cot to the excitement of Sudan's dusty capital. A horrible representation of myself, one I can hardly bear, but one that was not so far from the truth this past week.

In my defense, I would like to stress that it took the aforementioned battalion of ailments to bring me down. Viral influenza paired up with a foul, pus-draining eye infection and the worst case of asthma problems I have ever had; I spent a week discovering the unique combination of headaches/ bodyaches/ chest tightness/ nausea/ coughing/ eye pus/ sore throat/ exhaustion/ inability to see and the madcap fun of alternating fever and chills. A veritable battalion of disease. My phrasing it such to David prompted him to wax poetic, and he proposed the following metaphor: Like an elephant pursued by an entire village of hunters, only brought down in stages, so I (and my effervescent spirits) were brought down, slowly but truly, over days, to a self-pitying state of cranky pain.

I think it's a remarkably accurate metaphor, and I archly told him so over the snorts of laughter that accompanied his poetic recitation. (Humph.)

It's the Small Triumphs

I discovered my hatred of flies on a (short) long-distance bus today.

We were traisping from Dongola to Kareima across North Sudan, out to see some sights and have a bit of fun while we were at it, and the lots of bits of accumulative fun already had thus far had tuckered me out. I desperately wanted to spend the four hours in our quiet, dark and comfortable bus taking a nice little nap, and few things short of celestial wrath could have prevented me.

I was shocked to discover that an insolent creature no larger or more significant than A Common Fly could stand in my way.

You didn't notice it at first. You'd be drifting off, you were almost gone, and you could barely feel the little tickle on the back of your hand. But then SUDDENLY you felt it - you'd make an involuntary flap with your hand to get it off - and then you would start to drift back to that warm place. Drift, drift.. and there it'd be again. The tickle. You'd slap your hand again, more violently, more uselessly, and tuck it somewhere else as you curled back up to go back to that nap. The fly would find the other hand. Again, the tickle.. the almost ignorable.. you try to ignore it.. you could feel it moving around, exploring, until you JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. You flap that hand too. You open your eyes to find the offending creature. It's zooming around stupidly in the square foot of air right in front of you, waiting for you to settle down so it can too. You swat at it and miss. You sigh. You are too tired for this game. You tuck both hands under your arms, Sharia law means the rest of you is pretty much covered anyway, you smirk to yourself, and you close your eyes to go back to sleep. Let it land where it wants.
At which point it lands ON YOUR FACE.
You want to scream with rage. You flap both of your hands madly at your face. The fly resumes its orbiting of your head. You have rarely hated something so intensely in your life. You NEED this nap. You have a stroke of genius. Despite the relative warmth of the bus, you flop your entire sweatshirt over your head.

Darkness.
And Triumph.
And, you notice a moment later, Stinkiness.
(This sweatshirt has not yet been washed, and has lately shared a lot in common with your body.)
(This also might explain the fly.)
You decide you can bear the stinkiness and set about trying to fall asleep anyway.

Ten minutes later, gasping desperately for air, you emerge from the dark, hot, stinky, airless environment created by your sweatshirt-tent. Perhaps the fly is gone. You close your eyes and take in huge quantities of the delicious stale bus air. But within two minutes of tent dismantling.. there it is again ON YOUR CHEEK.

You swat at your face. You open your tired, red eyes, which perceive the Cursed Fly perched on the window curtain. As a spectator you watch your same fly-tortured hand sail through the air with a cat-like precision born of rage, and land with lightning swiftness upon the Bastard Fly before it has time to perceive that for one sorry sucker's life it is (quite appropriately): Curtains.

You watch the dead fly drop to the floor.

And you know the meaning of Bliss.

That old-time religion

ATBARA, SUDAN:
I'm a non-Christian
with no religious tendencies
in an overwhelmingly Muslim area
of a nation currently under Sharia Islamic law,
yet I'm in church.

Sometimes, god impresses even me.

It's actually my fault that we're in here, not David's, though he is the only one of religious bent (intellectual or otherwise) between the two of us; despite my wicked lack of faith there's something I've always loved about all religious places. I love churches in America, and cathedrals in Europe, and shrines in Japan, and it's been the great tragedy of my time in the Sudan thus far that I haven't been able to go into a mosque. (That, and not yet having a shower.)

So we were walking by, and the huge cross said to me what all the arabic signage in the world couldn't have, and I was just drawn like a magnet. As luck would have it it's Sunday, and the evening mass was already going on; I never would have dreamed of barging into it, but as soon as someone noticed us in the courtyard we were excitedly ushered in and shown a pew. I didn't understand the sermon, but I liked listening to the voice of the pastor and looking around the bare little building. One high-ceilinged room, whitewashed walls and cement floor, fluorescent bulbs paired up to form crosses on each side of a large fresco at the back of the room. Wooden bookcase stacked with old hymnals by the door. Dusty wooden pews in three columns facing a lone wooden podium, with a few smaller sideways pews at the front where eight or nine bescarved women sat. Presumably the choir. Choir, preacher, and ushers included, there were not more than five dozen parishoners, most of them children squirming in the five pews in front of me, twisting around to get a better look.
Suddenly we all stood to pray; one woman's quiet voice rose over us in song from the front choir corner. I peeked with one eye, but every woman's head was bowed, there was no sign who was singing. Even as I peeked, her delicate voice was joined by another, and several others, until there was a chorus of women's voices swelling in song. Without a sign but in apparent coordination, like the gentle, slow pooling of water, the singing spread around us from pew to pew until five dozen voices, male and female, deep and high, were lifted up in a beautiful song I had never heard, and will never hear again. The richness of the sound, the depth of it bloomed like warm dough in an oven. Standing among singers but not singing myself, I had the unusual impression of being inside the song, as if the power of these voices was a phsyical force that could lift you and expand you with every chorus.
It was beautiful.

Sweeping Generalizations

As I have now been in the Sudan for more than one cycle of 24 hours, and have managed to wrangle my way into other parts of the country, I feel justified in making a few summarial comments:

(a) the Sudan is sunny
(b) the Sudanese are fantastically friendly
(c) the Sudan is poor
(d) there are not very many white people/ foreigners here

(While I suppose I could gather most or all of these facts from a variety of easily available information sources, I would venture to say I feel them to be true much more than I knew them to be before. And in this derive my justification for expounding them so grandiosly.)

The Tale of Yasser Arafat and the Sado Okesa

Warning: following tangential dribble has nothing to do with the Sudan, Africa, or really anything important and/or factual.

SO sleeping in a new bed makes me have really vivid dreams, and the shuffling around we've been doing here means that my head has been the setting for some very unusual visions lately. One in particular could possibly deserve recounting.

In this dream, I was telling prof. David about the island where I lived in Japan, and getting really into it; I even went so far as to hum the Sado Okesa, a traditional folk song and dance famous for being a part of Sado's unique culture. Before I even finished my hum, however, David got a sort of wry look on his face and quipped that he was surprised to hear I was blindly singing such a song, as it was the Official Theme Song of Yasser Arafat.
I was dumbfounded.
It is a testament to the level of my respect for David that I did not for a moment consider that he was mistaken. If he was saying it, it must be so. However the concept that this crooned tune, taught to me by little old ladies of an isolated island in rural Japan, could simultaneously represent some sort of political message in a different part of the world, was difficult to swallow. As I sat there, unable to believe that the professor was lying or wrong but equally unable to buy that the Sado Okesa had anything to do with Yasser Arafat, Palestine, or the Middle East, I decided that logically the situation itself was an impossibility, and I must therefore be having a dream. And I promptly woke up.

Vivid as it was, only the extent of David's hearty laughs as I recounted it to him later really convinced me it was only fiction.

(but when I think of the song now, who comes to mind but Yasser...)

Recording My Spoiled Naivete

Well, all my harassment about unfulfilled promises has had an effect, and David has finally managed to deliver a satisfactorially-sketchy hotel room. He's actually described it as 'very nice' comparatively speaking, so I've understood that this hotel is among the nicer that I will be calling home over the course of the next eight months.
Nevertheless, it has managed to set a new low for my personal experience. (And I have pretty low standards.)

While complaining isn't going to make anything any better, and I don't really feel the need to vent, in the interest of preserving a record of this initial innocent disdain for the benefit of my presumably jaded later self, I'll record my various grievances here:
* floors, wall, ceiling, furniture and all facilities are in a general dumpster-level state of age and disrepair, though not offensively
* the bathroom rivals that featured in Trainspotting, offensively: no counter, soap, separate shower, flooring, covered drain, or door handle; the toilet lacks a seat, back cover, flusher, and toilet paper; extensive leaking, dripping, and consequent splashing everywhere from hanging showerhead/ faucet/ toilet/ wall leads to a sticky and wet floor and generally wet experience while using the loo; large hole in the ceiling leads to a wide and dusty metal duct
(perks must be acknowleged: operational door lock; water present in the toilet bowl, if foul; functional flush and tap; apparently functional showerhead- though temperature control would be a fantasy, and accidentally inserting one's naked foot into the toilet bowl, a risk)
* the only bedding provided on my bed is a faded sheet adorned with multiple small bloodstains
* the metal duct leading out of the bathroom 'ceiling' traverses the top of the room to exit presumably outside, and has played host several times in the past few hours to either the death or mating of a loud, heavy, and madly scrambling rat and/or other animal. We considered throwing a shoe at it to stop it but I was mildly concerned that such an assault might completely rupture the rickety duct, or otherwise upset the rat's stability on the gently sloping path leading directly to the aforementioned large hole in bathroom ceiling (said hole's merits as an escape route in the event of a zombie apocalypse have duly been noted and explained to David, the zombie-risk-uninitiated. I will do my best to enlighten him.)

Despite all this, the room is large and high-ceilinged, making it spacious, and quite comfortably generally speaking due to the two strong fans. There are also two patio chairs and a relatively new color television for our use, which blows my mind: for me, television rates far lower on the scale of hotel priorities than, say, a presumably-cheaper toilet seat.


POSTSCRIPT (next day): my failure to duly acknowledge the functional bathroom light earlier has duly been punished, as it now no longer works. flashlights ain't just for camping..

Al-Sudan !

WE
have at long last ARRIVED
in the SUDAN.

Such satisfaction has rarely been seen on the faces of two travellers. I hope Omar al-Bashir sincerely appreciates what lengths- and continents- we have gone to just to get here. Though somehow, disappointingly, I doubt his omnipotent Generalness is even interested.
Governmental indifference aside, we have accidentally checked ourselves into a nicer (and more expensive) hotel than David originally intended. I'm beginning to lose faith in his repeated yet thus-far empty promises of hole-in-wall hotel rooms. While this hotel technically does have a few holes in the wall, it's really otherwise just fine, if a bit in disrepair. My room has a functional bathroom, complete with toilet paper; the bed has sheets and a pillow; there is even a fridge with sodas in it. Really, the only thing lacking is the assurance that the hotel manager will not try to become better friends with me at midnight via certain persuasive tools and his own copy of my room key, but luckily, I am (a) forewarned (b) prudish and (c) resourceful. Every piece of furniture available in my room is thus currently stacked against my door, and fortified by the bed itself and my own added weight. I look forward to sleeping peacefully tonight.

Generally speaking, this hotel is really quite nice, if suffering a bit from inattention and the passage of time. The phrase 'faded glory' comes to mind. Apparently certain regime policies and current events haven't done wonders for the tourism industry in the lovely capital.
Which we've noticed in more than one way.. though I have seen two or three other uncovered female heads, we've yet to see any other foreigners, or any other white people. I'm conservatively dressed, but nonetheless I seem to stand out anyway. Memories of rural Japan are renewed, but I'd be lying if I said I was as comfortable: not possessing any familiarity with the culture or language, I'm not sure how to interact with anyone, and the continual overtures from Khartoum's considerably-less-shy population tend to throw me a bit.
But perhaps I'm devaluing my abilities. I suppose I did learn how to count in Qatar, so the next time a stranger comes up and yells "WELCOME TO SUDAN!" at me, I could express my appreciation by yelling back to him, "ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE!"
It might make for an interesting interaction, anyway.

Oh, Qatar.

So.. best laid plans of mice and men, et cetera.. and I'm in Qatar.
(I was not supposed to be in Qatar.)
I am supposed to be in Khartoum, rendering my current location (Doha) not only an unforeseen city but also an unforeseen country. And continent.
It happens, I suppose.
At any rate, this is Qatar.

The Qatari flag is everywhere, particularly hung vertically as a banner with the silvery and white bit at the top. I am suddenly conscious of my naked head, but not necessarily of my skin color, because Doha seems to be virtually owned by foreigners. Our taxi drivers are Indian; the restaurant waiters were South Pacific; the money exchanger was Pakistani. Truly a cosmopolitan blend, but one that does manage to come across as whole-heartedly 'mid-eastern'. Labrynthian souk markets offer dazzling arrays of scarves and tantalizing smells from the baskets of spices piled outside shops. Prayer mats are for sale alongside blades, keepsake-boxes, and amulets inscribed with arabic quotations from the Qur'an. Neither of us bought anything, but it was beautiful just to look at. A feast for the eyes.

Walking afterwards along al-Corniche, a paved tree-lined walkway along the water, we happened to witness an unusual spectacle. A series of large white SUVs flew wildly down the broad avenue towards us, honking fit to beat the band, followed by others, and still others. Many cars had all the windows rolled down and men bedecked in white robes sitting or hanging out of their vehicle, despite the frenetic pace and consequent weaving through traffic. One sunroof-equipped vehicle barrelling noisily down the center lane memorably had a man calmly standing out the top of the car, arms outstretched for all the world like a messenger of god.
My first wild guess would have been that this was some sort of elaborate celebrity cortege, but travelling with a professor has many benefits, and I learned that this was apparently a post-ceremonial wedding processional.
The haphazard stream of flying, honking cars continued past us for at least a minute, interspersed with other mundane traffic - occasionally caught up in the joy of the moment and honking good-naturedly as well.
Even in my jet-lag haze, I couldn't help but grin at such a celebration. How I would have loved to be in one of those cars, hanging out the sunroof with my friends and family, honking our heads off into the night and flying down the highway.

.... still here??

The Herculean battles fought- and lost- with U.S.Air over flight (and even hotel!) compensation do not need to be recorded here; nor do those fought trying to get on any plane to the Sudan the next day. Suffice to say, we finally succeeded with Qatar Airlines, to date the most luxurious airline I have ever or probably will ever fly on. (And, incidentally, about a sixth the price of any American airline corresponding flight.)
Our difficulties in getting out, however, meant that we spent Sunday morning NOT en route to Khartoum, but slouched in our respective beds at the Washington D.C. Hilton. I reflected on the amount of life-threatening dangers family and friends had predicted befalling me by this point in the trip, and decided I am thus validated in recounting here my greatest adventure thus far: the assemblage of our water filter.
Given the occasionally dubious quality of water in the third world, and the equally dubious coverage bestowed by my (lately adminstered) Hepatitis A shot, the portable hand-pumped water filter David was bringing along would probably see a good amount of action before long. While he waged telephonic battles with airlines, travel agencies, and credit card companies, I decided to make myself useful and put the filter together. The directions were clear, and before long I hoped to be transferring one mug of Hilton Hotel tap water into another like a pro.
The first cup was, in a word, frothy. Not a word I had hoped to apply to our drinking water. When the foam cleared, another adjective presented itself to my mind as an accurate descriptor of the : black.
As I stood there, looking down at the black, foamy cup o' fun in my hand, David chanced to look up from his latest phone call. "How's it going?" he inquired eagerly. "Can I have some?" Upon seeing the proffered cup, however, his eagerness definitely faded. "What is this, coffee?"
A second, more thorough viewing of the instructions confirmed that the first liter filtered should be discarded for containing "harmless" carbon dust residue. The pamphlet warned of a 'slight discoloration'.
..I took a picture, and will let y'all judge the 'discoloration' for yourselves.

Preparations complete, and we're off !... sort of.

So, the bags have been packed, the shots have been taken, the pills have been choked down with a splash of Baileys in a goodbye toast with me pop, and it's time to go!
The first part of the trip was simple: just get to Washington Dulles IAD Airport to meet up with David, some time before our 8:30p.m. departure for Italy, then Addis Adaba, then Khartoum. Simple, ne? O ye of blissful ignorance of my dear mater, nothing involving travel is simple. I'll spare you the infamous story of Jana and the Untimely Death of Independence Air, and summarize in saying that my mother places a very high regard on adequate layover time.
As in, ten-plus hours.
Since our flight was due to leave at 8:30p.m., it was probably a good idea to be there at least two hours before. Maybe add a little more in case my Pittsburgh-IAD flight was delayed an hour or so. You figure, arriving around four, that's plenty of time and more.
Again. Ye of blissful ignorance of my mother's travel-doom-prediction-talents. Normally I book my own travel and she's none the wiser, but as she had offered to pay for the one-hour flight as a Christmas present, she was more than usually involved in the booking. Wise from lost battles years before, I didn't put up a fight, and agreed to arrive at Dulles Airport at the ripe early hour (still probably a little risky) of SIX FORTY FIVE A.M.
As one shocked friend put it : "You could drive to D.C... and BACK.. TWICE." Yes. I could. But this is not taking into account the sudden snowstorms, highway closures, lost baggage, flight cancellations, and hijacking attempts that my mother has planned for. So, she was happy, and I was early, and looked forward to spending about fourteen hours at Dulles Airport on Saturday, December 27th.

As ironic fate would have it, however, my mother was to be the proven victor (my just desserts for my renderings of her online), and I was to spend far far more than fourteen hours at Dulles International Airport that day. David was due to fly in at 5:30 p.m. - I know what my mom must have been thinking - that's only THREE hours in advance! Nowhere NEAR enough time! .. and she was right. U.S.Air officially failed at spectacular levels unforeseen by even the most hardened of travellers, and managed to get him to the airport at just about 8:30. So we could watch our plane fly away together. How nice.
I'll spare the reader the ensuing lost battles with U.S.Air and a variety of other airlines (and then hotels), as David and I desperately tried to find a way out of the country that day or the next. (If only he'd had a fourteen-hour layover too..)In dejected failure we retreated to the airport Hilton for the night, a step up or two from the hole-literally-in-wall joint he had planned for the trip's first night, in the Sudan. He warned me from the depths of one of the two plush, softly blanketed and doubly-mattressed beds, voice muffled by soft white pillows: "Don't get used to it, princess."
(I'll try not to.)

Preparations, part two

Step Two: the packing

While the medical preparations were at least exhaustive in attempt, I've actually been much less careful in the packing itself. "Exhaustive" is not a quality I am seeking. I hate to schlepp crap. Every purse I've ever had is the size of one or two hands; my car is spartan-esquely empty; moving days are the worst ones of my life. I just hate schlepping crap.
Keeping this fundamental rule in mind, I kept in mind the following guidelines for a packing list:

(a) if i take it, i have to carry it
(b) if i take it, i'll probably lose it, break it, or ruin it beyond imagination
(c) if i take it, and don't ruin it, i'll probably be relieved of it by an dexterous stranger before long

which leaves me carrying: a small set of clothes, a smaller one of toiletries, a few precious (consumable) books, and four risky pieces of technology: a camera, its bits (battery/card/charger/cord), contact lenses, and my cd player. I'm hoping to hold onto most of them as long as possible, particularly those contact lenses - my extreme blindness transfers into low resaleability - but we'll see how it goes.

Speaking of clothes, I was informed that my current wardrobe may not have much to offer in the way of blending in with Nigerian/ Sudanese fashions. Given guidelines (b) and (c) above, I chose to create a new one entirely at GoodWill. 30 minutes spent holding up every floor-length garment in the skirt aisle produced the following satisfying aquisitions for exactly six dollars total (where's my runway?) :

the first, very classy, i thought

the last, also

the third is a real risker - notice the ankle exposure when i shrug - and the second is all but useless in the sudan - but the fabric was soft and i just couldn't resist.
(i've always been a sucker for tactiles.)

Preparations

Step One of Preparations: Stayin' Alive

So, apparently the Western World of Medicine holds certain ideas about Africa, one of which is that anyone who goes there without a pedigree of immunizations will surely die in a horrible and painfully spazzing way (and might anyway). I'm told this is accurate. At the risk of making an off-color joke that will get me into an *awful* lot of trouble later about certain popularly-held conceptions of Africa, I'll launch right into an inventory of the various things I've been subjected to lately in the goal of preserving my quite excellent (if hiccupping) health during my travels.
First there are the shots; the yellow fever goes without saying, nasty but neccessary; I've already got the HPV and Hepatitis B, and suffered through tetanus-pertussis, measles, mumps, and rubella. Discovered through failed titers that I additionally needed polio, so got that too. So far so good right?
Until the Hep-A - it's a six-month series, but I was only in the States for four (Sept-Dec). The card-carrying lab-coat-sporting doctor optimistically told me that if I went to get it *right* before I left, I'd earn myself a shadow of immunity that would last through the first six months of the trip. Then I'd just sort of .. float my way through those last two months. This sounded like a pretty good plan to me (as opposed to zero shot, zero immunity) so I went for it with my usual zeal, waiting riiiiiight up until Dec 20th to get that shot.
At which point I discovered that while what he said is related to the truth, it's not quite all the way there. That truth being that the first Hep-A shot gives you immunity for up to one year; you just can't get the second shot until six months later at the earliest. So I could have gotten the shot any time over the last three months, and would have been fine through to at least September of 2009. The beautiful irony of his advice is that the one time I actually couldn't get the shot and have immunity is, you guessed it, right before the trip - because the immunity takes several weeks to kick in. So, I'll be washing my vegetables carefully in the Sudan.
Then, there are the pills: after a particularly intense session at the Allegheny County Health Clinic in which my upper left arm was visited by pertussis, yellow fever, and MMR, I was enchanted to learn that typhoid is immunized orally. Fantastic! I thought to myself as I pocketed the $45 pills. I got busy, it rained, the dog ate my homework, etc., and not until I pulled them out of their safeguarded location in my med cabinet six weeks later did I notice the "PLEASE REFRIGERATE" label pasted on the front. Highlighted. In blue.
Feeling a bit sheepish, I drove my way back to the Health Clinic yet again - they knew me pretty well by this point - and explained what happened. For reasons I'm not examining too closely, they somehow accepted responsibility for my refrigeratory incompetence and gave me a brand-new set. Needless to say, I was more careful with this one, knowing it would surely be my last, and over the eight-day regimen I followed the temperature requirements to a tee. Even, when necessary, stuffing a single pill, ziplocked, into a bag of ice, ziplocked, in the back of my car so I could take it while out/about, at 50F, exactly the same time each time, and one hour before I ate.
Take THAT, typhoid!!

Boy, if I get typhoid in Ghana, I'm gonna be so pissed.

So then all that remained pill-wise was to protect myself from malaria. While vaccination isn't exactly an option, anti-malarial pills are, and a wide and exciting variety exist. Including, in fact, one with side effects rivaling heroin itself, the usual hum-drum suspects of headache, nausea, dizziness, fever and vivid dreaming paired with the excitement of confusion, nightmares, ear-ringing, unexplained anxiety, severe depression, paranoia, aggression, seizures, suicidal urges, hallucinations, and the general psychosis that only hard drug-users normally get to have. (the lucky sods.)
But don't you know it's my lucky day... because guess which anti-malarial drug is also the easiest to obtain and easiest to take along this type of trip?? At the recommendation of a former peace corps volunteer, I bought one (1) pill and decided to try it out on myself while in the (in theory) "controlled" environment of my parents' house to see how much joy I might really bring to this trip.
I was quite excited about this one-week trial (see picture) and made a point of telling two close people and no one else, hoping to hear both specifically-attentive and unbiased reviews of my personality on psychosis-inducing drugs. I secretly rather looked forward to a tense moment of melodrama at the end of five days in which I would potentially find myself perched on a ledge, holding a scimitar, screaming to astonished friends my terrible secret: I was tripping on mefloquinine.

Unfortunately... I am apparently one of the dull three people in four who isn't really affected by the drug. Nothing happened. My confessions of anti-malarial-pill-poppings to friends didn't really elicit more than an "oh, really?" The only change seemed to be that I am somehow LESS crazy while on it. After someone pointed this out, I noticed that the anti-malaria week did in fact seem mildly shrouded with a veneer of general euphoria.* Homicidal pitfall avoided; I eagerly picked up $246 worth of the stuff. (Get excited: shopping around saved $300.)

*Side note: said euphoria abruptly terminated in a pit of cranky hopelessness two days after the cycle ended. that, too, passed, but briefly made me wonder if I was going to have issues coming "off" the mefloquinine.. but only briefly, because apprehension about coming off was forgotten in excitement to go back on.

So, it would seem I am medically quite ready to go. In case of a happy-pill failure, I also have DEET and a mosquito net; to tide me until my hep-a immunization I have Purell and a water pump. Side comments about Imodium AD not welcome. And I'll try not to feel too silly about all of this if I'm ultimately taken down by a pride of lionnesses. After all, we're all mortal, aren't we ?

Leaves are falling all around..

! w e l c o m e b a c k ! bienvenue ! ようこそ ！ youkoso !
friends and lovers,
to the online frittering of empty time that my "blogs" have always aspired to be.
(i never can get used to that word, "blog". it sounds like something a toddler would be scolded for saying.)
attempts to read meaning into my title will be met with great amusement.

A touch of background, though probably unnecessary, just for fun: I am getting ready to embark on a bit of a trip to the middle swath of Africa in a few days here. I'm going along with a prof who is consistently referred to by most of his department as "Indiana Jones." It is my first time going to Africa unless you count a half-day stint in Tangiers during which my great-aunt and I discovered that we are both very naive. One never learns so much about oneself as when one attempts to succeed at another country.

So I imagine I'll probably be learning a lot about myself.

Anyway, so I'm not actually that well-versed in 'travel' per se; my prior experiences in other countries have been almost exclusively of the squatting nature. I go, I stay, I putter around and try to emulate those around me in a desperate bid to blend in. Mixed success. Some in Europe, none in Japan. But most other travelers (resisting the urge to add that second L) can talk me under the table on the topic of railpasses, Lonely Planet, backpack smell, and bars in Amsterdam.

I tell myself I'm ready for the hygenic part, at least, thanks to showering in a vat for most of the last year. And my very newly-acquired skill of eating whatever it is that happens to be on my plate, in motion or otherwise, is definitely going to become handy.

Things I'm wall-bouncing-ly excited about:

• the food
• learning any amount of Arabic
• not being cold
• getting to experience what dictatorships are actually like from a non-intellectual perspective
• the Red Sea
• hearing the complete version of any one of 45,203 party-stopping tales of past adventures that David, aka "Indiana Jones" keeps tantalizingly half-alluding to, but refuses to properly tell, given how much "bonding time" we'll be having later for storytelling.
  

Things I'm wretchedly anti-excited about

• having crackedly dry hands
• not getting to meet any dictators, or even high-ranking ministry of information types
• missing charles, the inspiration for all my ambitions and honored in the bottom right corner
• mosquitos
• the inevitable date at which point David will discover I am not, perhaps, all I seem cracked up to be in terms of competence, and am really quite a bit of a fool (see islandgaijin.blogspot for details.) In the meantime, if you know him, don't tell.

So, this is where i'll be dumping commentary as we go along. i have absolutely no idea how often internet will be a part of my life, and I'd be lying if i pretended to be a timely poster. the stories will be written. the blog will be created. but whether the stories will make it into the blog is, well, sort of a toss-up... i'll ganbaru!